The Danger of Thinking You Already Know Jesus

Daniel Correa, our youth pastor, opens with camp. His 15-year streak of never getting soaked in the water fight ended when a leader hid in the bushes and another jumped out of a tree with a bucket. The better news: New Hope brought 72 students, and around 60 students at camp gave their lives to Jesus for the first time or recommitted. On the last night of middle school camp, students started praying over each other in the middle of worship and would not stop. The sermon never happened; they worshiped and prayed for two hours.

Daniel says that even a student who came every week would spend about 72 hours a year with him, while parents spend that much in a week. So he prayed about how to reach parents and students together, and landed on Matthew 13:53-58.

Jesus comes home to Nazareth and teaches in the synagogue. The people ask where he got this wisdom, and Daniel hears sarcasm, not wonder. They knew him as the carpenter’s son, Mary’s son, the brother of James and Joseph. They put him in that box and missed the Son of God. His first point: familiarity can make us blind to what is right in front of us. If Daniel had kept the faith he had when he met Jesus at 18 and stopped reading and being discipled, he would still be stuck there. Two students then share how camp changed their faith: one found Jesus at camp a year earlier and began praying daily, and another learned to spend quiet time with God each morning.

The second point is that our expectations of Jesus need to give way to who he is. Daniel separates being expectant in prayer, which is good, from demanding that Jesus be whatever we think we need.

The third point: faith is not about having all the answers, but trusting the one who does. Nazareth wanted proof, and proof never satisfies a hard heart. Daniel tells the story of his twin boys, diagnosed with twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome at stage four. After emergency laser surgery in Pasadena, each baby had a 50/50 chance. He was angry until Pastor Ross told him God is either on the throne all the time or not at all. For a month, he and his wife told each other, “God’s on the throne.” Both boys were born, and they were in the room that morning.

He closes by calling church a launching pad: a starting line, not a finish line. Then he invites people forward for prayer.